Are you ready for it?
I really should charge for this post, because this is the sum total of everything I've learned from the past year of reading a bunch of books and magazines, recording two albums, listening to hundreds of tracks, hanging out in a slew of Nashville studios, and talking with a bunch of professional engineers and producers.
No matter the song, style, or instrument, here is what you need to get a great sound recorded. In exact descending order of importance:
1) A great player
2) A GREAT PLAYER!
3) A quality instrument, properly set up and tuned (by the great player)
4) Your ears. Do what sounds good!
5.1) A microphone that's not garbage (a $250 AT 4033 is perfect)
5.2) A great preamp (this is the expensive part. Gonna set you back about $2000)
- If you're dedicated, you can acquire equivalent preamps for more like $500. It just takes patience, connections, and/or willingness to learn electronics and solder.
The end.
And really, 5.1 and 5.2 should be in smaller type or something.
Their importance pales in comparison to number 1 and 2.
Oh, and would you also like the secret to being an all-star producer and making hit music?
One thing.
This is it!
A. GOOD. SONG.
There.
That is the oxygen of music.
All the vitamins in the world won't help if you ain't got no air :/
I wish I could convey the mountains of books and articles and discussions and obsessions in the audio industry that are all eminently superfluous to what's listed above. It's so simple, but we all keep hoping that buying the right compressor will make the mediocre song performed by mediocre musicians sound like magic!
Perhaps some day I'll look back on this post and smile at my audacity. But this is what I've seen walked out in a thousand ways. And I think it makes sense, in the cosmic simplicity of the universe.
So there you go. I take cash and checks. Paypal is good too :)
Friday, April 30, 2010
Saturday, March 27, 2010
A Very Good Friday
Today was a great day! Many good things happened within these hours that I always want to do but don't often end up accomplishing.
It started with a wake-up phone call from Justin at 6:45am. (Earliest I've gotten up in a LONG time)
Followed by Bible reading while eating a grapefruit and a tangerine.
Then, I admit, I took a shower and crawled back into bed for awhile. It was supposed to be a 7:45 wake-up, but the time zones messed things up. I was bitter cold too - the ground floor here is always bone-chilling! :-(
Got back up and headed to Sal's. Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughn's keyboard player) came in at 10 to lay down piano for a Tom Douglas demo. It was a rollicking honkey-tonk tune, with gritty lap steel guitar and drums that made you smile. He took it up another notch with just the right feel, and easy command of a thousand amazing riffs.
After he left I gradually talked Sal into giving Taco Bell another try. He had gotten severly burned out after eating it almost every night for months back when he was touring. I explained that they had delicious steak and chicken now, paired with cheese, wrapped in a crispy fried tortilla, and bursting with quesadilla tastyness. My euphoric language eventually got to him, and we ended up having a great lunch at the Franklin Taco Bell.
We kicked it back at the studio for a few more hours after lunch. Sal worked on Tom demos, and I read up on Beat Detective in the ProTools manual. Learned a lot of great stuff about something I've been using in ignorance. The last thing we did before I headed out was jam out on piano and guitar. Sal showed me some jazz chord progressions, and especially the "Sharp fourth substitution," which is rocking my world!
At 4 o'clock I headed north to Nashville for a GUITAR LESSON! Yes indeed, after watching a show at 12th & Porter and feeling yet again utterly inadequate musically, I had the idea to take lessons while I'm here and get some much-needed external input for my playing. I got a recommendation for a good guy at Rock Block Guitars, choked slightly at the cost, but ultimately decided to go for it. I spend money on plenty of things, few of them as beneficial as this will (hopefully) be.
The lesson was good, but not in a cool flashy "look at all these licks I learned!" way. We talked about what I hope to learn, I played for a bit, and he began showing me that my left hand posture is very wrong. My fingers are all scrunched together and my wrist is twisted at an angle. All of that feels fine, but weakens and constricts my motion. I've got a set of exercises to work on to drill in proper wrist position, finger separation, and elbow movement. Ehhhhh, it's always like this learning a worthwhile skill! Gotta work to make something very weird become natural.
Sal texted me as I was heading out and invited me over for "Pizza Friday" at the Oliveris. We did this last week too, so now the kids think it's a tradition :) I was quite happy to enjoy Tina's great pizza and hang out with the fam. Sal's kids are something like 8, 6, 3 and 2, so there is a TON of energy about EVERYTHING, and no lack of talk or excitement. I love it! Hanging out with kids is like a huge blast of fresh appreciation for every little thing in life. Make the stuffed lamb breakdance on the table, and you're more entertaining that Jerry Seinfeld! :-) I have been really blessed by Sal and his family's friendship to me. Great folks!
After dinner and hanging out I popped over to Billy's. Billy Whittington is Sal's go-to engineer and mixer, and I've been going over to his house-turned-studio every couple days since I got here. It was 7:30 on a Friday night, but there was no doubt Billy would be camped out in his chair, mixing and editing away. Such was indeed the case. Lights glowed through the windows, Billy's pickup was parked outside, and I gingerly opened the noisy old back door (in a house that's a studio you never know if somebody might be recording live) to hear the monitors thumping from the mix room. Billy is a great guy - friendly, welcoming, ridiculously hard working, and really good at what he does. I took a seat and watched the screen for a good 30 minutes as he worked. Asked a question here and there, and eventually Anna Johnson and Billy #2 arrived. Anna is a (extremely talented) musician who's been recording her debut album with Billy W and Billy Smiley (producer, guitar player, co-owner of the house studio, and quite commesurate with his last name). So she listened to the mixes Billy had been working on, people started coming in and out, and after looking at some of Anna's drawings and paintings (which are also really good - gosh!) I headed out.
In one of my alternate-route explorations of Franklin I had passed this immensely intriguing "Battle Ground Brewery." It had been bouncing around in my head since then that I needed to check it out, and I figured this Friday night was as good a time as any. It didn't seem that big from the outside, but I went in, went up a big flight of steps, up some more steps, and through a big seating area into a room, hunting down the enticing blare of live music. Ah me oh my, what a great way to wrap up the day! It was a huge old Civil War-type house, great feel. They brew their own beer, and at the far end of the room was a 4-piece blues band just tearing it up. That's one of the great things about Nashville - all the musicians are stinkin' GOOD! These guys knew what they were doing, and both guitar players were loaded with chops. So I sat there editing my latest batch of photos on the Macbook Pro, sipping the best pale ale I've EVER consumed, and listening to fantastic guitars just sailing away.
AND, I'm wrapping all of this up by writing it up in a blog post! Also one of those things that I always want to do, and that weighs on me when I don't do it for awhile. I'm propped up against the wall, laying on my air mattress bed, tucked nicely under warm blankets and my hoodie hood. The warm glow of the touch lamp leaves most of the room in pleasant obscurity, and Steely Dan is spinning away on the record player. Oops - just finished the side. Guess I should shut it off and hit the sack. G'nite y'all!
It started with a wake-up phone call from Justin at 6:45am. (Earliest I've gotten up in a LONG time)
Followed by Bible reading while eating a grapefruit and a tangerine.
Then, I admit, I took a shower and crawled back into bed for awhile. It was supposed to be a 7:45 wake-up, but the time zones messed things up. I was bitter cold too - the ground floor here is always bone-chilling! :-(
Got back up and headed to Sal's. Reese Wynans (Stevie Ray Vaughn's keyboard player) came in at 10 to lay down piano for a Tom Douglas demo. It was a rollicking honkey-tonk tune, with gritty lap steel guitar and drums that made you smile. He took it up another notch with just the right feel, and easy command of a thousand amazing riffs.
After he left I gradually talked Sal into giving Taco Bell another try. He had gotten severly burned out after eating it almost every night for months back when he was touring. I explained that they had delicious steak and chicken now, paired with cheese, wrapped in a crispy fried tortilla, and bursting with quesadilla tastyness. My euphoric language eventually got to him, and we ended up having a great lunch at the Franklin Taco Bell.
We kicked it back at the studio for a few more hours after lunch. Sal worked on Tom demos, and I read up on Beat Detective in the ProTools manual. Learned a lot of great stuff about something I've been using in ignorance. The last thing we did before I headed out was jam out on piano and guitar. Sal showed me some jazz chord progressions, and especially the "Sharp fourth substitution," which is rocking my world!
At 4 o'clock I headed north to Nashville for a GUITAR LESSON! Yes indeed, after watching a show at 12th & Porter and feeling yet again utterly inadequate musically, I had the idea to take lessons while I'm here and get some much-needed external input for my playing. I got a recommendation for a good guy at Rock Block Guitars, choked slightly at the cost, but ultimately decided to go for it. I spend money on plenty of things, few of them as beneficial as this will (hopefully) be.
The lesson was good, but not in a cool flashy "look at all these licks I learned!" way. We talked about what I hope to learn, I played for a bit, and he began showing me that my left hand posture is very wrong. My fingers are all scrunched together and my wrist is twisted at an angle. All of that feels fine, but weakens and constricts my motion. I've got a set of exercises to work on to drill in proper wrist position, finger separation, and elbow movement. Ehhhhh, it's always like this learning a worthwhile skill! Gotta work to make something very weird become natural.
Sal texted me as I was heading out and invited me over for "Pizza Friday" at the Oliveris. We did this last week too, so now the kids think it's a tradition :) I was quite happy to enjoy Tina's great pizza and hang out with the fam. Sal's kids are something like 8, 6, 3 and 2, so there is a TON of energy about EVERYTHING, and no lack of talk or excitement. I love it! Hanging out with kids is like a huge blast of fresh appreciation for every little thing in life. Make the stuffed lamb breakdance on the table, and you're more entertaining that Jerry Seinfeld! :-) I have been really blessed by Sal and his family's friendship to me. Great folks!
After dinner and hanging out I popped over to Billy's. Billy Whittington is Sal's go-to engineer and mixer, and I've been going over to his house-turned-studio every couple days since I got here. It was 7:30 on a Friday night, but there was no doubt Billy would be camped out in his chair, mixing and editing away. Such was indeed the case. Lights glowed through the windows, Billy's pickup was parked outside, and I gingerly opened the noisy old back door (in a house that's a studio you never know if somebody might be recording live) to hear the monitors thumping from the mix room. Billy is a great guy - friendly, welcoming, ridiculously hard working, and really good at what he does. I took a seat and watched the screen for a good 30 minutes as he worked. Asked a question here and there, and eventually Anna Johnson and Billy #2 arrived. Anna is a (extremely talented) musician who's been recording her debut album with Billy W and Billy Smiley (producer, guitar player, co-owner of the house studio, and quite commesurate with his last name). So she listened to the mixes Billy had been working on, people started coming in and out, and after looking at some of Anna's drawings and paintings (which are also really good - gosh!) I headed out.
In one of my alternate-route explorations of Franklin I had passed this immensely intriguing "Battle Ground Brewery." It had been bouncing around in my head since then that I needed to check it out, and I figured this Friday night was as good a time as any. It didn't seem that big from the outside, but I went in, went up a big flight of steps, up some more steps, and through a big seating area into a room, hunting down the enticing blare of live music. Ah me oh my, what a great way to wrap up the day! It was a huge old Civil War-type house, great feel. They brew their own beer, and at the far end of the room was a 4-piece blues band just tearing it up. That's one of the great things about Nashville - all the musicians are stinkin' GOOD! These guys knew what they were doing, and both guitar players were loaded with chops. So I sat there editing my latest batch of photos on the Macbook Pro, sipping the best pale ale I've EVER consumed, and listening to fantastic guitars just sailing away.
AND, I'm wrapping all of this up by writing it up in a blog post! Also one of those things that I always want to do, and that weighs on me when I don't do it for awhile. I'm propped up against the wall, laying on my air mattress bed, tucked nicely under warm blankets and my hoodie hood. The warm glow of the touch lamp leaves most of the room in pleasant obscurity, and Steely Dan is spinning away on the record player. Oops - just finished the side. Guess I should shut it off and hit the sack. G'nite y'all!
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